Sorry if this has been mentioned, but the music playing after Howard Stark gives his proto-repulsor demonstration, is the same music that plays at the Stark Expo in IM2, and in the end credits, "A bright new morning is dawning. Make way for tomorrow today...etc, etc."

Also the weapons used by Hydra have the same sound effect as Iron Man's repulsors. Considering Howard finds the tesserect, that must also somehow tie to the ARC reactor.

One more showing that the tesserect may have given Howard new ideas about the ARC reactor. In the Hydra base they are toting around what looks like giant sized versions of the ARC that's in Tony's chest.

I don't know if that's official or not, but that's what it looked like to me.

Sorry if this has been mentioned, but the music playing after Howard Stark gives his proto-repulsor demonstration, is the same music that plays at the Stark Expo in IM2, and in the end credits, "A bright new morning is dawning. Make way for tomorrow today...etc, etc."

Also the weapons used by Hydra have the same sound effect as Iron Man's repulsors. Considering Howard finds the tesserect, that must also somehow tie to the ARC reactor.

its possible. im positive Red Skull isnt dead, i think he was just transported to another realm. i dont think he would make it in Asgard without somebody noticing him. if he and Loki have met its probably safer to assume it was after Loki was transported away at the end of Thor

I like to think that the Red Skull has spent decades in Jotunheim teaching Frost Giants to goose step.

At the Expot, there's a shot of a glass case with a manaquin in it, that says "the artificial man".

Not sure if you're familiar with golden age Torch, but he was an android that was put in a glass case, because when he came in contact with air he would burst into flames.

Since the Torch had his initial flame out at a press conference, I figure that might have happened at the Expo a few days later. By then Steve had been transformed and was on his way to USO glory, so he wouldn't have been involved in the conflagration.

I'm pretty confident that the element Tony Stark recreates in Ironman 2 is based off the Tesseract powersource...Howard told Tony that he was limited by the technology of the day to reproduce it...key word being reproduce.